Common People

late afternoon at a bar in El Charco

a couple are busy on their phones

the bartender is polishing glasses

music playing and the voice sings

Common People -  but this time

it's a woman singing in Spanish

and they reduced the band

to a single acoustic guitar

and I can't help closing my eyes

i'm remembering us now

in that huge rented house in Italy

rattling around in rooms of antiques

with three huge double beds

you wearing a Common People  

t-shirt, fitted, longer hair, so young

but otherwise not much different

smiling you poured the cheap wine

adding random ingredients to pasta

your arms were beginning to brown 

and we slept deeply even though 

it rained really heavily every night

i was reading 'From Potter's Field'

you read a fat biography on Genet

and at night we'd play cards and plot

and we hid away like that for a month

in a tiny village in the hills right by

the Devil's Bridge - Il Ponte del Diavolo